The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook: Over 100 Fabulous Recipes to Use Eggs in Unexpected Ways

By Lisa Steele

Discover new and exciting ways to incorporate fresh eggs into your cooking and baking.

"Fresh Eggs Daily blogger Steele lays down as many tips and recipes as her chickens do eggs in this innovative and plucky collection.... This will be hard to beat." - Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Lisa Steele, fifth-generation chicken keeper and founder of the popular blog Fresh Eggs Daily, knows a thing or two about eggs. And she's ready to show you just how easy and delicious it can be to make eggs a staple of every meal. First, Lisa will tell you everything you don't know about eggs--such as what the different labels on grocery store egg cartons mean--and bust some common egg myths.

From there, she provides you with 17 foundational techniques for cooking with eggs and preserving methods, including:

• steaming,
• grilling,
• baking,
• frying,
• salt curing,
• pickling,
• and more.

 

And finally, Lisa shares 122 of her go-to recipes for everything from breakfast staples to breads, sandwiches, beverages, snacks, soups, salads, pasta, cakes, pies, and condiments. Recipes include these and many more:

• Eggs Benedict
• Classic French Trifold “Omelette”
• Pannukakku (Finnish Oven Pancake)
• Goat Cheese Frittata with Herbs
• Maple Bacon Scotch Eggs
• Egg Yolk Ravioli
• Baked Eggs in Butternut Squash Rings
• Bacon and Beet Hash
• Hollandaise Sauce
• Homemade Marshmallows
• Boozy Spiced Eggnog

 

You'll encounter a wide variety of both sweet and savory dishes with Lisa's unique twists. Whether you have a large backyard flock, a small urban chicken coop, or just love finding delicious local eggs, as you read The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook you will discover new and exciting ways to incorporate fresh eggs into your cooking and baking repertoire each and every day.

Honorable Mention for Excellence in Aesthetic Achievement in the 2022 Readable Feast Awards celebrating the best of New England Food Writing and Cookbooks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Feb 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9780785245438

Lisa Steele

Lisa Steele is an author, popular television and radio guest, and creator of the blog Fresh Eggs Daily, the premiere online resource for chicken-keeping advice. Lisa has amassed an audience of nearly one million from all over the globe, who look to her for tips on raising backyard poultry naturally, gardening tips, and her coop-to-kitchen recipes. Her previous books on chicken keeping have sold more than 125,000 copies worldwide and are among the bestselling chicken-keeping books in print. Dubbed "queen of the coop" by the media, Lisa has been recognized by many national media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, Country Living, Farmers’ Almanac, and Parade. As a television and radio personality, Lisa has appeared on the Hallmark Channel’s Home & Family, Martha Knows Best on HGTV, P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home, and NPR’s Maine Calling. Her first book was recommended summer reading on The View in 2018, and her website was featured on an episode of The Dr. Oz Show that was focused on eating eggs. Lisa also hosted two seasons of the Telly Award–winning television show, Welcome to My Farm, on NBC in Maine. A fifth-generation chicken keeper and Maine Master Gardener, Lisa lives in rural Maine, with her husband, their corgi and barn cat, and her “girls”--a mixed flock of about thirty hens, ducks, and geese. Plus one fairly grumpy rooster and a drake named Gregory.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Thin tendrils of sunlight slowly move across the field in the still, gray predawn hours, touching briefly on the dewdrops glistening on pink clover blossoms and white daisies. Only the gentle swoosh of a heron’s flapping wings can be heard. Then a woodpecker knocks on a pine tree and a chipmunk chides him from a perch hidden high in the branches, as small songbirds trill from their nests, and here and there, bees flit from flower to flower.

I’m still asleep in the cozy home on our small Maine farm, where we’ve lived for the past seven years, after trading a Wall Street life for rural living.

Suddenly, the relative stillness is punctuated by the shrill eer-eer-a-roo of our lone rooster, Sherman. I open my eyes, swing my feet to the floor, grab my jeans and a flannel shirt, and head downstairs. I gaze longingly at the coffee machine as I pass through the kitchen. My first cup will have to wait. Pulling on my boots, I grab a basket and make my way through the wet grass to the chicken coop.

I can hear the chickens softly chattering with each other while Sherman lets out the intermittent, resounding crow. When the flock hears me approaching, the excitement level grows until there’s a veritable cacophony inside. I quickly open the small door, letting the chickens out into their yard to quiet them. Then I walk around to the front of the chicken coop and peer inside.

My favorite hen, Miranda, is sitting in one of the nesting boxes and eyes me warily as I approach. She’s muttering, as if to herself. She turns her head, maybe asking for some privacy, then rises into a squatting position, gives a small grunt of sorts, and sighs. I hear a dull thud. Reaching my hand underneath her, I feel a warm egg nestled in the straw. I slide my hand out, gently clutching the egg as Miranda hops out of the nest, clucking loudly, announcing to the world that she’s laid an egg. She continues to cackle, as some of the other hens join in her celebratory song, and she heads outside to eat breakfast. As for me, I have the freshest egg on the planet for my breakfast.

Heading back to the house with the egg, I can already taste that first sip of hot coffee and mouthful of egg. Now I must decide . . . scrambled, fried, maybe poached over toast? Or perhaps an omelet?

HOW I HATCHED FRESH EGGS DAILY

My earliest recollection of raising chickens was kneeling with my little brother on our back porch when I was maybe five years old, peering over the side of a large cardboard box. Inside were fluffy baby chicks huddling under a lightbulb for warmth. We named them all, of course—I remember Batman and Robin were two of the names we chose, being big fans of the popular television series at that time—and we loved watching them peck at the ground and chase each other or fall asleep all snuggled together.

But about the time the chicks grew up and went outside to live in the henhouse, we lost interest in them. Raising chickens meant more chores, and what kid wants to clean a chicken coop when she could be out riding her bike or swimming at the town pool? After all, chickens were hardly a novelty. Not only did we have a barn and chickens at my childhood home, but my grandparents also had hundreds of chickens on their farm across the street. So I grew up used to chickens running everywhere.

My recollections of raising chickens aren’t the most positive. There was the rooster, Bojangles, who would chase my brother and me around the yard every time he got loose. There were the broody hens sitting on their nests, who pecked at our hands so hard when we tried to get the eggs out from under them that we took to wearing oven mitts to do our daily egg collecting. And there was our cat, Mousetrap, who loved to curl up in an empty nesting box and wait for us to bring the chickens their treats of supper leftovers from the night before—he enjoyed scavenging right along with the chickens.

Oddly enough, I never remember selling any eggs to earn extra money as a kid. I did set up a folding table to sell boxes of handpicked raspberries from the patch in our backyard, and I actually earned enough when I was in first grade to buy the neon orange and yellow bathing suit I had my eye on! I guess maybe the raspberries had a higher profit margin and lower labor cost. (Even at that tender age, I had some accountant tendencies.)

Fast-forward a few decades to a small horse farm in Virginia, where my husband, Mark, and I lived. It was early 2009, and with the recession in full swing, homesteading and living more economically off the land was coming back into vogue. I decided that I wanted goats. After all, we already had the barn and fenced-in pasture. I could make soap and cheese! And who doesn’t love baby goats?

Well, Mark was less enamored with the idea (he had visions of goats clomping on the hood of his truck!), so he counter-offered with chickens. One of the guys he worked with had started raising chickens and was regaling the office with stories about them. I’m not sure if Mark recalled the accounts of my early days and first chicken experiences, but either way, though I wasn’t a particular fan, I figured I’d say yes to the chickens and then work on him regarding the goats. Before he could change his mind (or before I could change mine), I grabbed the car keys and we headed to the feedstore to pick out six peeping balls of fluff. As we drove home with our box of chicks, I marveled at the fact that it was the first time in more than twenty years that I had held a chick in my hands.

After leaving the small town in Massachusetts where I grew up and graduating from college in Rhode Island with a degree in accounting, like many small-town kids, I knew there was a big world out there I wanted to be a part of. And with that, I moved to New York and ended up spending the next couple of years working on Wall Street. What a whirlwind of cocktail hours and client dinners, movie premieres and celeb sightings. My entire closet consisted of business suits, conservative Ann Taylor dresses, and of course the ubiquitous little black dress. I’m fairly certain half of my wardrobe was, in fact, black. I wore heels and pantyhose. I carried a briefcase. I spent my money as soon as I earned it. And after not too long, I realized that as exciting and fast-paced as it all was, it wasn’t the life for me. I always felt like an imposter in that world. And it was exhausting. Town cars home after working twelve-plus-hour days, lunches gobbled down at my desk. And a nearly hour-long commute each way on days I didn’t use the limo service. It wears on a girl!

One morning, I took the 7:27 train from Rockville Centre, Long Island, into Manhattan. I stopped to buy a cranberry orange muffin and a coffee from my favorite street vendor. Wearing the Wall Street uniform of the day—a navy-blue two-piece suit with a cream-colored blouse underneath, my nails manicured and my hair in a sensible, classic pageboy—I trekked the few blocks from Penn Station to my Midtown office at Morgan Stanley. I grabbed a copy of the New York Times from the newsstand in the lobby of the building and then headed to the elevator. Once ensconced at my desk, I sat down, spread out the newspaper, and munched on a piece of muffin, following it with a sip of coffee.

As I bent over to unlace my sneakers and change into the high-heeled pumps I kept in my bottom desk drawer, I stopped. This was not me. This was not how I was meant to spend my life. I straightened up and looked around at all the traders in their suspenders and crisp white shirts. Listened to the faint sounds from the nearby trading floor and watched the stock prices on the ticker tape flash by on the overhead screen.

Picking up my phone, I called my boss, who hadn’t yet arrived that morning, and left a message on his voice mail that I was quitting. Then I gathered up my muffin and coffee, grabbed my briefcase, and headed back to Penn Station to catch the next train back to Long Island. My Wall Street career was over. Seven years after graduating from college and moving to New York, I was officially leaving the rat race.

I had, fortuitously, saved up my Christmas bonus and tax refund that year, so I had a little bit of a financial cushion. On sort of a whim I decided to open a bookstore next to the train station in Rockville Centre. Specializing in used paperbacks, my bookstore began to do quite a brisk business not long after it opened. I had recognized the potential customer base of commuters who read incessantly during the long train rides, plowing through novel after novel (this was before the days of the internet and cell phones, so surfing to pass the time wasn’t an option yet). By selling used books in that particular location, I offered the scads of train riders an option for more affordable and convenient books. A lifelong, avid reader myself, I was in heaven, delighting in my new career choice. Surrounded by books all day, chatting with fellow book lovers—what could be better? And my business background served me well. After all, I knew how to calculate profit margins and overhead and do my own taxes.

But you know what they say about best-laid plans? Several years later, I met the man who would soon become my husband. Mark was in the navy, stationed in Pensacola, Florida, but coincidentally we had both grown up in Massachusetts, barely forty-five minutes from each other, and had mutual friends. When we realized it was getting serious and we were going to get married, I knew I would have to move to Florida, since his relocating wasn’t an option. So I sold the bookstore. After two years in Florida, his next tour of duty was in Virginia, and that’s when chickens reentered my life. Where my time used to be measured by the opening and closing bell of the stock exchange, all of a sudden it was instead measured by the crow of a rooster.

Oddly enough, things with the chickens were different this time around. I was instantly enamored with them. My chickens were so soft and beautiful. They were funny to watch as they scratched in the dirt or chased each other, clucking merrily. Maybe because I spent so much time with them when they were young, they grew to be friendly and affectionate. There was no need for oven mitts to collect eggs. My hens were sweet and seemed to genuinely like me—and I liked them.

Facebook was starting to get popular, so I launched a page to post all my chicken photos (my friends were beginning to tire of my personal page being inundated with them). I randomly pulled the name Fresh Eggs Daily out of a hat. I soon realized I’d retained much of what I’d learned about chickens while I was growing up, and a lot of people who were new to chickens were looking for answers to their questions. My advice was different from the advice of others because I had made a vow to raise my chickens naturally, using herbs and edible flowers and natural preventives and remedies—after all, we were eating their eggs! So my Facebook page quickly grew to 10,000 followers, then to 100,000, then to 500,000 with no signs of slowing down.

I set up a blog, also titled Fresh Eggs Daily, mainly as an archive of sorts. I found myself answering the same questions repeatedly on Facebook and thought if I wrote up answers to the most common ten or twenty questions, it would be easy to grab the link from my blog to share anytime anyone asked a question. That was in 2012. To date, I have written over six hundred blog posts, my blog has been viewed more than fifty million times, and I still have more ideas swirling around in my head of topics to write about.

In between the blogging and social media (of course I branched out to Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and Twitter as well), I went on to write six books on raising backyard flocks, making me one of the most prolific poultry authors of all time.

My grandmother lived to be ninety-nine years old, and I loved going to visit her in her later years to talk about chickens. She raised hers differently than I do—hers were for meat and eggs, they didn’t all have names, and she certainly didn’t hang curtains in her chicken house! Even so, I know she was delighted that I was carrying on our family tradition. (I am officially the fifth generation of women in my family that we can trace back to keeping chickens!) Sadly, she passed away several years ago, but she left me with loads of sage advice, countless memories, several family recipes, and of course that chicken-keeping DNA!

The years went by, and I launched a natural poultry supplement line, hosted a local TV show, and continued to raise chickens and share my experiences on my blog and social media. But something was missing. I finally realized that I wasn’t living my passion. Sure, I loved my chickens, I loved raising them, and I was good at it, but my true passion is—and always has been—cooking and especially baking. I binge-watch hours of the Food Network, know the difference between wet and dry measures, and own all kinds of fairly odd kitchen implements like a cherry pitter and popover pans. I realized that I had a cookbook inside of me dying to come out.

My mom had me helping her in the kitchen as soon as I could hold a wooden spoon, and I’ve been cooking eggs for years. Baking cakes, cupcakes, and cookies; whisking and scrambling and poaching. I’ve perfected my hollandaise sauce and make a scrumptious crème brûlée. My popovers pop and my soufflés rise. And over the years, I’ve had to come up with some unique and creative ways to use eggs because as any chicken keeper knows, when your hens are laying, you’ll have more eggs than you know what to do with.

I decided that I wanted to share all of that with you. My recipes are a blend of my Scandinavian background (both sets of grandparents came from Finland, thus my affinity for cardamom and dill), my New England upbringing, and my current home in Maine. I cook fresh, local, and seasonal as much as possible. And we eat a lot of eggs. Naturally.

I believe that in life you make a series of decisions that ultimately lead you exactly where you are meant to be. And I am right where I belong. Living on a farm, raising chickens. Sure, I miss putting on that little black dress and high heels every once in a while. But I’m much more comfortable wearing a flannel shirt, jeans, and muck boots, with my hair in a ponytail.

Oh, and we never did get the goats.

KNOW YOUR EGGS

Of course, not everyone is lucky enough (or wants) to raise their own chickens. And I do recognize the irony in that statement, because it wasn’t too many generations ago that nearly everyone did raise their own flock. At least in rural areas. But it was considered a poor man’s venture, while the urban wealthy had the luxury of purchasing their eggs from the supermarket. Then times changed, and raising chickens declined once supermarkets became more popular and accessible to everyone and egg prices dropped. But raising chickens has become popular again, whether it’s to experience the simplicity of rural life, to know where your food comes from, or to enjoy the convenience and luxury of fresh eggs.

ARE FRESH EGGS REALLY BETTER?

But are fresh eggs really better? Is it worth getting up at the crack of dawn to brave the elements and pilfer eggs from broody chickens? I can verify firsthand that it’s all worth it, and I highly recommend always cooking with and eating the freshest eggs possible. It does make a difference. After your first bite of egg from a happy, healthy backyard chicken who fills up on weeds and grasses, bugs, and edible flowers and herbs, you’ll immediately understand the difference. But that doesn’t mean you need chickens of your own. I’m going to share with you how to ensure that you’re buying the freshest eggs you can. But first, I need to explain exactly why fresh eggs really are better.

Returning to the house, I kick off my boots and finally pour myself a cup of coffee, adding a generous splash of cream. Grabbing a sip of the steamy brew, I quickly rinse the still-warm egg under the faucet, making sure the water is slightly warmer than room temperature to prevent bacteria from being pulled into the egg through the pores in the shell as I wash it. If I weren’t going to be eating this egg right away, I wouldn’t wash it at all this morning. I would wait until just before using it. Eggs have a natural coating on the shell called the cuticle, or bloom, that keeps them fresher longer by acting as a barrier against air and bacteria, and washing removes that coating, so it’s good practice to wash eggs prior to cooking them.

I also don’t generally refrigerate our eggs. As long as they haven’t been washed, eggs can stay out at room temperature for several weeks and still be fine to eat, although they will stay fresher about seven times longer if they are chilled. (Eggs should always be stored pointy end down no matter where you keep them to ensure that the yolk stays centered in the white. This is important when making deviled eggs but also to help protect the yolk from any bacteria reaching it, since the slightly alkaline egg white isn’t conducive to bacteria growth like the nutrient-rich yolk is). But we go through eggs so fast around here, they rarely last more than a few days in the bowl on the counter. Room-temperature eggs work better for baking, so I always like to keep some out on the